and president obama is in hawaii. let's go straight to cnn's emily schmidt in washington. good morning. so before he left the capitoal, he laid out this three-point plan to washington. >> before he left to hawaii, he left for a gift for lawmakers to ponder in washington. here are the three main points he's saying. he wants to make sure there's a law passed that ensures 98% of americans know their taxes are not going to go up in just under two weeks. he also wants to make sure that 2 million americans who would otherwise lose their unemployment benefits if we went over the fiscal cliff would be able to keep those benefits. and finally he says, look, we can take a look at the longer term proposals, the larger reform at a later point. just lay the ground work at this point. we also know before the president left, he talked by phone with house speaker john boehner. he met in person with harry reid, although what the private happened, we don't know. but publicly things sound a lot like they have for the past few weeks. take a listen. >> every member of congress believes that, e